Sunday, August 16, 2015

ISIS, Bank of America, Freedom and Idolatry

On the same day, August 15, 2015, on the New York Times Op-Ed page, Roger Cohen
writes about the reasons that young Muslims from Western European countries
might leave to join the Islamic State in Syria (“Why
ISIS trumps freedom”), and Joe Nocera writes about how the “Bank
of America stiffs shareholders”. What could be farther apart? A discussion
about how disaffected, marginalized young people in the West find meaning for
their lives in a structured, rigid, ideologically/religiously driven movement,
and a discussion about how the board of directors of a huge bank (“too big to
fail”) reverses a shareholder-led post-recession decision to separate the roles
of the CEO and Board Chair? Well, there are similarities.

Cohen talks about “freedom from freedom”, from making hard
choices, from taking responsibility for one’s own decisions. “Zealotry of any
kind,” he writes, “subsumes the
difficulty of individual choices into the exalted collective submission of
dedication to a cause. Your mission is set. It is presented as a great one with
great rewards. Goodbye, tough calls. Goodbye, loneliness.” You no longer have
to decide what to do with your life. You no longer have to decide anything. You
are told what to do and you do it uncompromisingly and uncomplainingly. Even
though that includes sanctioned (nay, required!) murder (we’re not talking war
here; we’re talking torture and beheading) and rape (see “ISIS enshrines a theology of rape” in the Times, August 13, 2015). Cohen discusses how this is built on not
just a rejection of modern ideas like freedom – marry who we want, have sex
with whom we want, pursue careers we want, believe what we want – but an overt
hostility to them, a yearning for what people imagine things were like in the
past (minus no Internet). He also notes that this rejection of modernism does
not include rejection of the Internet, which ISIS uses freely and effectively.
I add that it also effectively uses the ages-old technique of encouraging young
soldiers to rape “the other” – turned into a religious duty! – thereby creating
an outlet for young people (men) who have been forbidden to have sex or marry.
Rape, slavery, and dehumanization of the other are timeless techniques used to
create loyalty and commitment. Oh, yes, and they are horrific.

In his piece,
Cohen refers to a book whose French hero, disaffected from modernism, converts
to Islam and submits to the higher power (but does not, as far as we know, rape
and murder). He also discusses, in less detail, how this has been a drumbeat by
far-right (is the implication that ISIS murderers and rapists are of the
left??) nativist and religious movements in Europe – rejection of “non-moral”
modernism and freedom. It is, clearly, also seen in those movements in the US,
and in the cults of submission to the guru/leader that are common, and
occasionally burst into mass murders such as those led by Charles Manson in LA
or mass suicide such as that led by Jim Jones in Jamestown. Cohen is usually an
apologist for the Israeli government, and his criticisms of ISIS can certainly
be seen in that light, but he is making very good points here.

OK, so there are
similarities between ISIS and nativist movements and right-wing religious
forces and cults. But what about the Bank of America? How does that relate to
this? Nocera’s article discusses how, after 2009, a shareholder-led movement
forced the (unwilling) BOA Board of Directors to separate the roles of CEO and
Board Chair, based upon the principle that the Board has governance
responsibilities, and is supposed to be the guardian watchdog over the actions
of the management; this is impossible if the Board Chair and the chief manager
are the same person. But, with less publicity, the BOA Board has recently
amended its bylaws to allow current CEO Brian Moynihan to be Board Chair. “What
the bank’s board did last October,” Nocera writes, “is not the biggest scandal
ever; I know that. Instead, it’s the kind of small, corrosive scandal that too
often marks the behavior of the modern company board.”

More to the
point, he notes the criticism of a bank analyst who is the “most vocal critic
of the board’s move” who was ”especially scornful of a Securities and Exchange Commission
filing the bank made late last month in support of the board’s move. It touted
Moynihan’s ‘unparalleled depth of understanding,’ and as proof, pointed to the
$11.7 billion Bank of America earned ‘in the three quarters ending June 30,
2015.’ (There was no mention of the $4 billion accounting error.) ‘The gushing
is like a teen magazine.’”

This is how we
treat our heroes, our gurus; it is not irrational but it is dangerous. Idolizing
a pop star is silly, but idolizing a CEO is virtually always wrong. It exempts
them from criticism and leads to dictatorial power and guarantees disaster
because no one person surrounded by “yes men” is going to always be right, or
make the right decision. Why should it be surprising that there are
similarities here to extreme religious movements, since making money is the
true religion in our country, at least among its leaders. Right-wing
politicians use issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and racism to appeal to
the masses of voters in a way as cynical as ISIS, but their actual policies
benefit banks and financiers and the management of huge corporations. We would,
I suppose, like to think that the managers of these corporations are rational,
market driven, and not corrupted by greed, but the evidence, from the market
collapse of 2009 to bailout of too-big-to-fail shows this is not so. Paul
Krugman writes in the Times of the
arrogance and failure to manipulate the markets of the leaders of China (“Bungling Beijing’s stock markets”, August 14, 2015), but we see the same
failings in Western corporate titans like Moynihan. We pay them incredible sums
because “they” earned $11.7 billion in earnings (which may be in part from
their management but certainly has other causes, not least the taxpayer
bailout) while ignoring the $4 billion loss (hey, not their fault!).

Cohen’s article
on ISIS and anti-freedom includes in its link to nativism a comparison to
Russian premier Vladimir Putin, “another foe of the West,” who “attacks its
culture from a similar standpoint: as irreligious, decadent and relativist, and
intent on globalizing these ‘subversive’ values, often under the cover of
democracy promotion, freedom and human rights.” Cohen is correct in noting that
Putin, like ISIS, attacks “the West”, but as Nocera’s piece makes clear, the
West is not free of these issues. The real problems are not those of too much
freedom; they are the problems of too much corporate power and racism.

The cult of
personality leading to blind obedience is always wrong, whether Hitler or
Stalin or Putin or Mao or Moynihan or Charlie Manson or Jim Jones. But even
when there is not a single dominating personality, as in ISIS or China’s
leadership, blind obedience is still wrong. Freedom may be hard, and racism and
prejudice and an economy that makes billionaires of a few and unemployed and
hopeless of many in the West may make it seem harder, but it is also our hope,
and is at the center of what we must pursue.